Safety at Work is a Social Program not a Reward Program

Managing safety within any organization is difficult.  

It’s difficult because we’re fighting human nature.  At-risk behaviors are more comfortable, more convenient, more time-efficient and rarely result in the sort of consequences (e.g., injury, discipline) sufficient to discourage their occurrence.  In addition, many metrics at work are in direct competition with safe behaviors.  Given the choice between a "sure $100 more this week in income" and a "slim possibility I'll get hurt" - most choose the money.

Safety programs have gone from “be safe to save the company money” to “be safe to protect yourself” to “be safe to earn awards.”  Unfortunately, none of these approaches has been proven to really move the needle on safety for any length of time.  In many cases improvements can be cited, but only during the program period when the maximum influence is being felt.  Once the program is discontinued, old behaviors return and safety once again becomes an issue.

If the issue were simply to educate people to the costs associated with safety and the benefits the individual enjoys by not having accidents then it would be an easy task to increase safety.  However, that approach has been used to influence people to quit smoking or stop eating at McDonalds… yet people continue to do both.  

As we've discussed before on this site - we are not rational.

If it were a matter of “rewards” wouldn’t NOT losing an arm or a finger be a big enough reward?  Does a coffee cup with the company logo really influence behavior over being maimed or killed?

It’s About Culture

Keeping an organization focused on safety isn’t a program.  Safety is a culture – and not just part of the culture but THE culture.

The definition of culture is:

The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.

The key words in this definition are “socially transmitted.”  

What this means is that the individuals in the group need to discuss, model and focus on safe behaviors between themselves.  They need to reinforce each other’s behaviors – participants are the reinforcers.  

Participants own the program – not the company.  

Read that again.  It’s important.

Safety Is Not About the Individual

Most people believe that safety only impacts them, and many safety incentive programs are communicated and designed around this idea.  However, safety is a more expansive issue.  A good representation of the safety issue can be found in life insurance commercials that put the real benefit of life insurance in a stark light – “Life insurance isn’t about you – it’s about them.”  

In other words people don’t buy life insurance for themselves but for the people left behind after a death.

What’s missing in most safety programs is this connection between the individual's behaviors and something THEY care about.  

People lose weight when it impacts their ability to provide for their families, or they quit smoking when their children’s pleas to “be around for my wedding” become too heart-wrenching to bear. 

In other words, the focus for changing behaviors related to safety needs to be redirected from the individual’s benefits or the company’s benefit to the benefit of the participant’s family, friends or other people that have personal significance.

Change the opinion that safety is an individual issue.  

It’s the Focus

Your safety program needs to do two things – get the participant to become an active member through rewarding other participants (the social/culture part) AND change the conversation from one of safety for the sake of the individual or company to that of a benefit to the individual’s family or other close personal relationships.

Don’t think a scratch off card and a mug will do the trick.  

You need to really, really, (one more time) really look at safety in a different light – give away ownership and connect safety to something other than “safety.”

Comments

[fran melmed]

really like this, paul. and it's the same with health and well-being, which is a contributor to improved safety too. focusing the message and the way it's transmitted to the individual and the org, through comms and design, on the greater whole helps convey WIIFM.

i've spoken with many the employee who says they only made health changes when they experienced a friend, family member or colleague's death. unfortunately, we often need crisis to spur us to change difficult to change behaviors. barring that, equipping people with the information and understanding for why change behooves them is our most powerful tool.

f

[Paul Hebert]

Thanks Fran. Wellness is another area where this approach would work well.

But information only goes so far. We need stories too. Most folks glaze over with the info - but pay attention to the individual stories. Like you said - "they only made health changes when they experienced a friend, family member or colleague's death." That's emotion talking not facts.

Focus on emotion first - then facts.

[fran melmed]

oh, to me information comes in a variety of ways, since we all process it differently: stories, podcasts, personalized messages built on our health data, interactive tools, etc.

cheers,
f

[Paul Hebert]

Where I was going was that in most cases people try to drive change through citing statistics, etc. but that doesn't resonate emotionally. It is very difficult to change a long-standing behavior through rational means - emotional means are more effective. I'll be talking about this next week when I do the review of "Switch" by Dan Heath.

[Eric Means]

Hi Paul,
I really liked this new view on safety. Do you think that the monetary rewards per individual are just too miniscule to have any affect? Companies are cheap at rewarding. To me, it seems like if the monetary rewards were very significant then the individuals would use new or extra precaution/processes that they would follow would ensure they get this reward every time.
-Eric

[Paul Hebert]

Actually, if monetary rewards get too big then it becomes a compensation issue and employees will find ways to game the system. I posted a while back on a county that shared the savings from being safe - great idea - some employees received an extra few thousand dollars. But the only way they can continue to get that money is to show improvement every year. So what happens is that one year good results - everyone gets paid. Next year very bad results, third year - they go back to being safe and they get a big bonus. Not a good strategy.

Safety needs to be decoupled from compensation and attached to culture. Culture is what you do to be part of the team. Safety isn't something you do to get more money, points, perks, whatever. That communicates that safety is "optional." Which is never should be.